Saturday, February 10, 2007

A reader recently brought to my attention the fact that gaybanker.com is listed on a domain name auction web site, having been auctioned last month for $200. With my curiosity aroused, I managed to get a bit more information from Google, because Google's web cache had an image which dated back to when the auction was in progress:

If you look closely at that image, the "Offer Description" visible in the above picture has the following to say:

Recently, GayRealtor.com sold for over $7,000.US! Gay names are more popular now than ever! GayBanker.com could be a fantastic investment with HUGE website potential!!! The Gay community is awash in money, money kept in banks, gay people support gay run businesses and GayBanker.com is a perfect fit for this niche market. ALL OFFERS CONSIDERED.

I'm not sure I buy that argument though. A gay friendly online realtor sounds a lot more feasible to me than gay friendly online banking.

So who owns gaybanker.com now? A query at www.whois.net referred me to who.godaddy.com where full ownership details are available. The answer is that gaybanker.com is currently owned by a realtor in Denver Colorado called Sold Denver. So my guess is that they're just speculating in 'online real estate' by buying gaybanker.com, perhaps having been convinced by the GayRealtor.com argument.

But is there a conflict? If gaybanker.com did become the website for a successful company, could there be a problem somehow in connection with this blog and with my "Gay Banker" identity? Luckily, I've been blogging as "Gay Banker" since February 2005, and the whois information on gaybanker.com confirms that that domain name wasn't created until July 2006. On top of that, googling gay banker at the moment seems to bring up my blogger user profile at top of the list, so if anything I reckon it's me who is the established online "Gay Banker".

In which case, are Sold Denvercybersquatting on my domain name? I'm not sure what the legal situation is, but for now at any rate, I don't care. If blogspot.com is good enough for joe.me.god. and Belle de Jour, I'm sure it's good enough for me too!

3 comments:

Interesting close encounters :-). Since I wrote this post, I've realised that gaybanker.com is devalued for it's owner by the existance of an established blogger of the same name. After all, at the moment anyway I'm top of the google searches for that name!

I'm a gay man, living in London UK. My blogging pen name is GB, which stands for Gay Banker.

Professionally, I'm an investment banker, which unfortunately is an occupation that's been rather out of favour with the general public in recent years. However, I like to think that I'm one of the good guys :-). I'm also an agony uncle. Please refer to my 'About me' page for more information.

Requests for advice welcome, but please be prepared for anonymous publication in the Dear GB category. Also please check the Dear GB archives in case any of the existing postings can help. Reader's stories also welcome. Note that any e-mails which are accidentally routed to the junk-mail folder will almost certainly get missed.